EA’s ‘Madden NFL’ Chief Talks Amazon Docuseries ‘It’s in the Game’

In addition to the much-promoted Black Friday NFL game, Amazon is serving up an extra helping of holiday sports content this week with its new docuseries about the history of the best-selling video game based on pigskin: “Madden NFL.”

And no, the timing isn’t a coincidence, as “Madden” publisher EA Sports is well aware of the association between Hall of Fame football coach and iconic commentator John Madden, for whom the franchise is named, and Turkey Day.

“Thanksgiving is synonymous with Coach Madden. He called about 20 Thanksgiving games as an announcer and was part of many different holiday traditions,” shared Daryl Holt, senior vice president and general manager of EA Sports. Variety. “It became a calling card for football around Thanksgiving.”

Throughout his life, Madden was deeply involved in the development of the game – formerly known as “John Madden Football,” until EA struck its long-term rights deal with the NFL in 1990 – and Holt said EA Sports has considered ways to spread the word the story of the franchise and Madden’s longstanding influence. Then came Amazon, which has been working overtime to solidify its position in the football community since finalizing its “Thursday Night Football” pact from 2023 to 2033.

“The filmmakers and Amazon reached out to us, but we’ve already been quite receptive as we’ve been thinking about ways to tell the story and legacy of Coach Madden’s involvement, the longevity of ‘Madden NFL’ as a franchise, now 36 years in history. make and keep going,” Holt said. “So that opportunity, as it presented itself, was a natural for us to say, let’s dive deeper and see how we can make this work. I’m glad that we were able to build a great relationship with Prime and the filmmakers, and that we were able to pull back the curtain and open the archives on some of the things that we never really shared or talked about.

According to Amazon’s Prime Video, “It’s in the Game: Madden NFL” reveals “the untold story of Madden NFL, from its archaic 8-bit origins to its success as an annual must-have – against all odds.” What started as an unlikely combination between a computer expert and a football legend sparked a revolution and caused a seismic collision between the worlds of jocks and nerds. They should have failed. Instead, their play changed the game – and our culture.”

The four-part series, which features Holt and other current EA Sports executives and “Madden NFL” team members, features never-before-seen footage of the origins of the three-decade-old franchise, as well as how developers the finishing touches on next year’s “Madden NFL 25.”

“It’s a huge challenge to create a game as deep and big as ‘Madden’ every year, and it’s complex. It’s the most complex sports game you can make,” Holt said. “So there will be things behind the scenes that they will understand better. There will be opinions from game developers in various ways, both past and present, on how this stuff works and how it comes together and the challenges that can arise. And I’m hopeful that that understanding will give them a greater appreciation for something they already love.”

Produced by the A+E Factual Studios group, Michael Strahan’s SMAC Productions, Misher Film and MTP and directed by Nathan Caswell and Jeremiah Zagar, the documentary is intended to appeal to long-time fans of the ‘Madden’ franchise as well as a younger one target group. who ended up in the NFL game at a very different time for the sport.

“You have to look at all the fans of Madden, and there are clearly two schools that you could simplistically take the generations out of, which is a new generation of fans who may consume sports differently – they probably follow athletes and highlights, and don’t sit necessarily on the couch watching a football game for three or four hours — and then others who grew up with the sport and remember John Madden as a coach, or certainly as a Hall of Fame announcer and coach,” Holt said. “So all of those things come together in the docuseries so that people understand what ‘Madden’ is about, in terms of how it started, how long it’s been around, what it takes to take the game through the nostalgia journey which is the past. , as well as the current combination with the development of ‘Madden NFL 25’.”